In an information age, remaining connected to information at all times is extremely important. People use many devices and services to stay connected to information and to other people, such as cell phones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers. A by-product of this connectivity is the tremendous amount of personal information that is generated, or known, concerning each “user.” This personal information covers a broad spectrum of categories, such as credit information, phone numbers, and addresses, to name just a few.
Personal information, in general, is becoming more and more valuable. In order to be more effective with their marketing efforts, merchants are willing to pay large amounts of money to find out very personalized information about individuals. On the other hand, personal information is also extremely important to control. For many important personal reasons, individuals generally do not want their personal information disclosed, including information the service providers possess. However, individuals may be willing to allow some personal information to be distributed to others, including merchants, if the individuals can control the type and amount of information distributed and possibly receive some value in exchange for that information. For example, a person may be willing disclose his or her whereabouts in exchange for valuable opportunities, such as a special sale or discount with a merchant.
One area of personal information that is increasingly useful, important, and valuable is a person's physical location. Automated guidance and global location services depend upon identifying a person's, or a thing's, location. Fleet management can greatly benefit from monitoring the physical location of a fleet of vehicles. Merchants make use of a person's location, offering specials to those who are in a certain area. As mentioned above, some merchants are willing to pay for such information. Alternatively, it may be nice to locate one's friends in order to determine a convenient gathering location. As can be seen, there are many times that it is advantageous for a person to disclose the person's physical location.
Many devices or services are capable of generating or collecting location information. For example, wireless telephone services are able to locate a person by sensing the presence of a person's wireless telephone in a particular coverage area, or cell. Similarly, a wireless network service is able to locate a person by sensing the presence of the person's computing device with a range of wireless gateways, such as an IEEE 802.11 (b) or a Bluetooth-enabled network. In both of these examples, the service senses the location of a broadcasting device and therefore knows that the device is within a certain area. In another embodiment, global positioning system (“GPS”) devices utilize geosynchronous satellite signals to calculate a person's position, which can be displayed to the person.
Electronic calendars and e-mail applications can also generate location information. For example, a person may enter an appointment in an electronic calendar that specifies location information. Additionally, an e-mail message may include statements such as, “I'm at work,” that correspond to location information. Clearly, there are many ways which devices, or services, or both, can generate information about a person's location.
Although there are a number of ways to obtain location information, most location information generating systems are closed, meaning that the location information is used only within the system, if the location information is used at all. For example, wireless devices typically use location information to obtain wireless service. Current location information is displayed by a GPS device to the person operating the device. Both of these closed location information generating system examples are not well suited to allow a “located” person to exploit the value of that location information by providing it to others outside of the system. In general, typical location information generating systems do not allow a “located” person to distribute the location information to third parties and/or permit the “located” person to control the distribution of the location information to the third parties.
Rather than a single device or service, a person may be associated with multiple sources of location information. For example, a person may have a wireless telephone, a computing device running an electronic calendar and e-mail, and a GPS device. All of these devices and services are able to generate location information for that person with differing degrees of accuracy. However, in the past, no mechanism for collecting and/or processing the various sources of location information to provide a person's location information when a request for the persons location is made.
In addition to the above-described shortcomings, most existing location information generating systems do not provide individuals with adequate resources for controlling the way third-party entities access the individual's location information. For example, when a location owner provides access to their location information, the location information may be indiscriminately received by any person, computer, or third-party entity having access to the system. As a result, most existing location information generating systems cannot readily meet the privacy needs of location information owners.
Existing systems that allow uncontrolled access to an owner's location information also present other disadvantages. For instance, uncontrolled access of an owner's location information does not allow the owner to provide different types of access to different recipients of the location information. Moreover, uncontrolled access of an owner's location information does not allow the owner to restrict the availability of their location information to specific time periods. A need for such restriction capabilities may arise in a number of situations where a location owner has different reasons for sharing his or her location information with different individuals. For example, an employee may only want to share his or her location information with other employees during business hours. However, at the same time, the same employee may want to share his or her location information with family members at all times. To date, existing systems fail to provide location owners with the ability to selectively share location information with different users at different times.
What is needed is an improved location information generating system that provides controlled access to a person's location information. In addition, there is a need for a location information generating system that allows a location owner to control access to the owner's location information to different users at different times.